There was once a bike that went 127 miles an hour.
It looked like this:
And it went like snot. It was ridden in 1962, in Germany, by a crazy bastard named José Meiffret. It's worth reading the full story, which I stumbled upon via ThumbShift and Grist.com. Everything about this bike and the ride strikes me as having a sort of inspired, delirious madness about it.
And while we're marveling at inspired craziness from the past, here's some from the present: I was on the way home tonight when I heard CBC's As It Happens running a story about Boris Johnson's cycling initiatives, announced this morning. Boris Johnson, in case you don't know, is the mayor of London, England. I've posted a video on this blog of him riding a "Boris bike" with Arnold Schwarzenegger when they got instated (incidentally, the Boris bikes are actually the Bixi bikeshare system, bought from Canada). I knew he was a cycling supporter.
But to the tune of 913 million pounds? That's how much he'll be spending on infrastructure to prioritize bikes, get more people cycling and relieve traffic, according to the Guardian. There will be a 15-mile "crossroad for cyclists" - a fully segregated bike freeway, co-opting parts of existing motorways. There will be three "mini Hollands" in the suburbs - areas where bikes will supplant cars for internal transportation almost entirely.
As Jeff Douglas said on the show, "If you're a regular cyclist in a Canadian city, you might want to plug your ears and hum loudly for the next few minutes. Because this story may make you a tiny bit envious. Or unbelievably, unbearably envious."
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